IWRM- a concept that acknowledges complexity

I have already assessed some of the trends in water services, highlighting how often these solutions have been promoted not necessarily on the basis of the results they produce. Water in Africa may require more nuanced approaches than those of community management and privatisation, with there being a need for acknowledgement of the fact that the management of water affects a variety of actors and resources. This post will assess Integrated Water Resources management (IWRM) as a potential alternative.  

Water management has been around for a long time. The twelfth-century king of Sri Lanka, Parakram Bahu the Great proclaimed, "let not even a small quality of water obtained by rain go to the sea, without benefitting man". However, a change in approach to water management has occurred and so it should have. In this philosophy the king sets out for water to be managed in such a way that it should benefit humans. This does not however, consider the other resources that need to be managed, such as environmental water requirements and this neglect may result in adverse environmental impacts, which can ultimately in fact be detrimental to humans. This issue with water management can be seen more recently and even in developed countries. In London there has been an increase in closures of the Thames Barrier for flood protection. This has resulted in sewage behind the barrier taking longer to flush out, reducing oxygen available for fish, while also resulting in an unpleasant odour, thus adversely affecting human life (WWF 2003). 

Recent management has also seen failures to consider all stakeholders. An example, within Africa is the Bakolori dam, created in 1978 in Nigeria. Creators of the dam failed to correctly consider the needs of farmers downstream that required specific water flows, such as sufficient flooding during the wet season, to support flood recession agriculture (Adams 1993).  7000 hectares of rice produced and 5000 hectares of dry season crops were resultantly lost (Adams 2000). This demonstrates the adverse affects that occurs when not all water users are considered during water management, but also helps emphasise how spatially complex the relationship between water and food is. 

(IWRM) is a concept that attempts to address such issues. The concept was adopted in 2000 by 113 countries in 2000 during the World Water Forum. The concept rests on the idea that there are four different dimensions to water management (Savenije and Van der Zaag 2008):

1- water resources; taking account of the entire hydrological cycle. 

2- water users; considering all economic interests and stakeholders. 

3- spatial scale; considering the varying spatial distribution of water resources and uses. 

4- temporal scale; taking into account how availability of and demand for water. 

Previously water management relied on engineering expertise to produce strategies, but IWRM represents a change, with different stakeholders being consulted (Van der Zaag 2005).  

As effective as this concept may sound, implementing it is not so easy. African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) produced a report in 2018 assessing the implementation of IWRM in Africa, through an implementation score out of 100.  Implementation varied substantially, as seen in figure 1. Northern and Southern Africa had implementation scores of 50 and 49, compared to 37 and 42 for Eastern and Western Africa (AMCOW 2018). This is consistent with my emphasis on the variability within Africa. 

Figure 1: A map illustrating the level of IWRM implementation across Africa. (AMCOW 2018)

Meanwhile, a challenge to the effectiveness of IWRM in Africa, is the fact that Africa's transboundary basins cover 62% of the continent's land area (AMCOW 2018). This is significant, because conflict can arise as to how to manage these basins, due to differing desires of countries within the same basin. Perhaps a way to address this is to focus on distributing the benefits form the water resource, rather than trying to equally share the water itself (Van der Zaag 2005).  Nevertheless, cooperation will likely be difficult to achieve without strengthening Africa's currently weak institutions. 

IWRM is yet to fully show its effects in Africa. General development of Africa's institutions is required to ensure all four dimensions can actually be feasibly considered. However, I believe its ability to recognise the complexity within these dimensions, especially in comparison to community management and privatisation, is promising. This is in particular the case for food in Africa, as this concept attempts to acknowledge all stakeholders in decisions, with farmers being no exception.